Shadow Season by Tom Piccirilli

may even be a tad more disgusting than your index finger jammed down into his aorta.
    When the ambulance gets there, the paramedic tells you to keep your finger where it is as they load theold man in. As you climb up into the back you think, Keep it there for how much longer? You’re starting to cramp. The ambulance passes a Chinese restaurant and you know you’ll never eat that shit again. In the emergency room they finally take over and give you your finger back and let you return to the station.
    In the locker room, Ray sees you’re covered in your partner’s blood but you don’t have a scratch on you.
    Shaking his head, the grin not a grin at all, he says, I don’t like how this is shaping up for the guys who team with you.
    Nine months later you’re reassigned together.
    He says, I’m ever shot in the heart, you keep your hands out of my guts, right?
    You think, Right on, solid, hell yeah.
    Being a cop, it’s climbing a tree in Chelsea and getting a kite out of a branch, the kind of family-values shit you see on pamphlets printed up by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The smiling officer handing out life lessons, the kid with rosy apple cheeks giving the thumbs-up, a nubby-tailed puppy at his feet, and Jesus with his arms around everybody.
    But on the way down you tear the seat of your pants so you’ve got half your ass hanging in the wind, and the kid and his mother grab the kite and turn away without even saying thank you.
    It’s wanting to rush up after them and rap them in the backs of their heads with your nightstick. The rage is there, trying to take over. Down the block, the kid starts flying his kite again and it dive-bombs onto 23rd Street and gets run over by a cab. The kid doesn’t even seem to care, but the mother is pissed at wasting elevenbucks. Ray sees the look on your face and tries for some quip, but you don’t hear him, your temples are surging. Your left butt cheek is bleeding.
    It’s watching as a father takes his own newborn son hostage and climbs up to the hospital roof, waving a scalpel and threatening to stab the kid or cut his own throat.
    You’ve been on the job less than eighteen months. You look around at the hardware, the rows of sharpshooters perched on buildings across the street, the negotiator sounding weak and nervous. The father takes a running start and stops at the ledge. He’s laughing, insane, sobbing, because his wife had a heart attack ten minutes after delivery. You try to feel for him. You try to think what it would be like if it was Dani on the table.
    The veins in your throat twist. The kid is wailing, but sleepily. You’ve been sent up to the roof to guard the stairway and told not to engage the father. It’s not a bad word to use in these circumstances, “engage.” Your lives will be as entwined from here on out as if you had gotten married.
    You lack the clarity of vision that Ray has. He sees everything in black and white, makes his choices instantly, and sticks with them. He wants to rush the father and shoot him in the head.
    You’re the one who has to say things like, But what about the baby?
    It makes you sound whiny as hell, and Ray gives you the look.
    He starts to walk up behind the father, who’s doing a jig out on the ledge, howling like a dog now. Ray takes aim knowing damn well that no one can possibly findhim at fault in this. They’ll give him a medal. He’ll have his picture in the paper for weeks and be crowned a hero. This is the way to a gold shield before you’re thirty. So long as the baby doesn’t go over the edge too.
    Your mind is a blitzkrieg full of theatrics. There’s no calm, there’s only the action. You see yourself rushing forward, diving, and catching the infant. You can almost hear the cheers, see the kid coming up to you in twenty-five years to say thank you, trailed by his wife and two children.
    Ray is trying to be silent, hunched and moving in a reptilian creep and crawl. He might as well be